It was after about a week and a half or so of walking the road that things began to change. And the idyllic (save for knights) world of traveling merchants and bards, pilgrims and vendors, began to change.
It started when the wind, which had blown from the moment Emily fell from the sky, died. She and Leo had been walking side by side, holding a normal-ish (if confused and one-sided) conversation about movies, when everything stilled. She thought of the thick air that day in Nevis and shivered.
The trees died too. Though that process was more subtle. First, the leaves withered, falling to the ground in clumps; then the trunks turned ashen; finally, they began to fall.
All in the span of a few days. It was like they’d entered some kind of reverse hurricane, with the deadliest zone in the center.
Emily asked him about it, on the second day. His reply was simply that too much magic had been used. They were nearing the border, where most of the fighting took place, and the excess of magical energy was apparently too much for whatever had lived here.
Emily tried hard not to think about what that meant for them.
When they reached Camlun, the last town before the border, the last hurrah before whatever stressful situation Emily had no doubt would inevitably befall them, the passersby had dwindled to none. Camlun was small. Small and ruined. The road clearly ended here, or rather, it used to. Now it ended in a crater that swallowed it and a good chunk of an unfortunate nearby house. The remaining half was a dark dollhouse from where they stood.
Across the crater and beyond the town, Emily could make out columns of smoke rising into the afternoon sky. They all seemed about the same distance away, which meant—
“They’re from border encampments. There might be a ceasefire, but even if they’re not fighting, I doubt either side would want to back down.”
Emily nodded. She could imagine there were at the very least some tense glares being exchanged.
They stood there for a long time in the silence, the rim inches from their feet, ruined houses and the stench of rotting fields nearly overwhelming. Emily was steeling herself, and she knew Leo must be too. The crater wasn’t deep, the bottom was visible, filled with violent chunks of slate grey stone. The humming in the silence, which Emily could usually ignore, was louder here. As she stared, the hum become louder, rhythmic, thumping.
Hooves.
She spun around.
In the still air, the dust from the band of approaching riders galloping at full speed only swirled around every hoof-fall. Even from fifty feet away, Emily saw purple capes and the blinding glinting of freshly polished armor. The fluttering plume on the helmet of the lead rider confirmed them as the group that had been on patrol. In moments, they cleared the distance, skidding to various stops just a little too close for comfort.
Beside her, Leo’s shoulders were tense, but his face, as always, gave little away.
“Knights, he said quietly, “they couldn’t know we have magic. Maybe if we just act natural…” he trailed off.
The leader slid off of his saddle. Emily tried to ground herself, reaching for that silence that wasn’t silence just in case, scanning their surroundings for something, anything. He gave his horse a couple of absentminded pats, before removing his helmet. His face, complete with a carefully curated mustache, was set in hard lines. His eyes made contact with hers for a moment, before continuing with disinterest towards Leo. They lit up.
Emily heard Leo inhale sharply. Then his hand grabbed hers and yanked. She stumbled with the first few steps, making the mistake of briefly looking back and seeing rage on the knight’s face as he made to follow, shouting to his men behind him. They reached the dead forest along the road and blundered into it. Dead branches tore at Emily’s face, and then at her hands as she tried to block them. Gnarled tree roots caught at her boots. She saw Leo trip over one through the cracks in her fingers. Though creaking wood and the multitude of curses behind them told Emily that the knights were close behind, she wasn’t prepared for the sudden stinging in her scalp, and the forcible halting of momentum as someone grabbed her by the hair.
Pure instinct forged from years of self-defense teaching (courtesy of Sylvia) brought Emily’s elbow up as she twisted. She closed her eyes, reaching quickly for the humming undercurrent, letting it focus into a single point. Her elbow, with bodily momentum and hopefully some magical help—though she had no idea how it would manifest—made contact. A howl of pain jolted her eyes open. Unfortunately, It seemed that leader-knight hadn’t ever put his helmet back on. Blood was gushing out of a now very crooked nose. Emily took off again after Leo’s retreating back.
Between labored breaths, Emily whispered a quick sorry. Even though the knight definitely didn’t deserve it.
After the noises behind them had faded, Leo stopped and waited for her to catch up. Once Emily reached him, they zigzagged before diving into a low hollow at the base of a giant tree. Encircled by roots bigger than Emily, they stayed down, pressing close to the base. Emily sucked in short, hissing breaths. Leo was utterly silent and immobile beside her. She almost couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest.
For hours, they waited. Boredom was tugging but relentless anxiety kept Emily rooted to the spot. She was, after all, very lucky that a blind elbow jab had connected at all. And to a face, rather than a helmet. If it hadn’t worked, well, the daggers, not to mention the sheathed swords, the knights had on them looked particularly sharp, and she knew they knew how to use them. Leo stared relentlessly ahead, she couldn’t manage to catch his eye.
Then, as the last vestiges of daylight were fading through the branches, something moved. Graceful and slinky, it barely jostled some nearby branches as it leaped onto one of the two large roots encircling them. It perched there for a moment, looking down at them from a few feet away. It was tiny, scaly, and dark purple that was almost iridescent, even in the dull light. Honestly? It reminded Emily of a cat. That is, if a cat had scales and a snout. And wings, she noted, staring at the pair of them tucked away on the animal’s back.
Oh my god.
“You guys have dragons?!” Emily whispered in awe.
The maybe-dragon sneezed. Leo’s previous distance seemed to have melted into hyper focused shock, “... no. We used to, but that was a long time ago,” he whispered back.
The spell had broken.
“Evidently not, because that is ten thousand percent a dragon.”
The definitely-dragon, seeming to take their voices as an example, began squawking. Loudly.
“Shoot.” Leo muttered.
On a whim, Emily patted the ground between them, staring up at it. Nevis had some neighborhood cats, so maybe this would be… similar? At least she hoped so. It took the invitation. On clumsy, batlike wings, it flapped towards them, still squawking. Leo gave her a look, Emily shrugged. It clumsily landed between them, made a beeline for Emily, and curled up in her lap. The noises it was making silenced, and just like that, it seemed to fall asleep. Hesitantly, Emily reached out to pet its scales. Aside from a small sigh, the dragon didn’t seem to mind. A loving being that didn’t want to murder her and wasn’t standoffish. It’s the little things.
Emily looked from it to Leo, “See? Now it won’t give us away.”
Leo hummed begrudgingly.
It was dark before Emily moved. Any sounds of knights had long since vanished, vanished even before the dragon appeared, but it never hurt to play it safe. Between the dragon and her unchanging position though, her legs were getting pretty cramped. It was probably fine. Probably. She nudged the dragon carefully and it stepped onto the ground on wobbly legs. Cute, but the space between her eyes creased, it seemed awfully young to be alone. Or at least alone as far as she could tell. Hopefully, this didn’t signal a larger, less friendly dragon. Oh well.
After stretching, Emily drew an extra blanket from her pack, folded it into a square, and deposited the baby dragon on top. Leo was still quietly seated in his same position. But between the darkness and lack of clanking armor and loud voices, Emily decided it was probably fine to stop whispering.
“So, you know that knight?” It was a question, but at the same time not. The last group of knights Leo’d been up against had gotten a bit more pushback, “You got out of there pretty quick. Not that I’m complaining, I mean that was definitely the smarter thing to do. Those knives didn’t look friendly.”
There had been no defiant words this time, no arrogant face, only fear and an instinct to flee.
“That was General Druett of Beauvais.” The same man the knights back in Raziet had mentioned. The guy who’s “looking for someone”.
Unease flickered in her gut as he stood, dusting off his pants, “Those knights said he was looking for someone…. Um, that wouldn’t happen to be you by any chance?”
“Of course not. He’s the highest ranking member of the Beauvais military. He—they say he only goes after people personally when they try to harm the royal family.” He didn’t look at her then, or for the rest of the evening as she practiced any and every martial arts form she could remember Sylvia teaching.
She’d offered to teach Leo but out of pride or arrogance or whatever strange mood he was in, he refused. Emily practiced imbuing fists, elbows, knees, and feet with magic even though the act exhausted her. She didn’t know if it even helped, because the magic she’d seen Leo do took a lot longer and wasn’t about transferring power per se, and she wasn’t about to try to punch a tree if she didn’t have to. Maybe it was useless against armor and swords, but it was what she knew. And Emily didn’t ever want to be caught unawares like that again.
Leo didn’t speak again that evening, and Emily didn’t want to rip the delicate silence. But when she finally lay down on her bedroll, sweaty from the training, she silently hoped that whatever secrets Leo was trying to protect were worth it.
They hadn’t made a fire out of caution, so she almost jumped when she felt something touch her side. She reached out only for her hand to meet warm scales.
She pulled the dragon in close.
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